Ordered

In my architecture discussion section we have idealistic conversations about nature and the built environment. My fellow students try to wax poetically about how the world would be better if everyone did x, y, and z. "If only people knew about being environmentally friendly, if only people were informed..."

I'm not necessarily pessimistic, but I am a realist. People know smoking is bad for them...yet they do it anyway. People know driving gas guzzling cars is bad for the environment...but they continue to drive anyway. The fact of the matter is that we do not see immediate consequences for our actions, so therefore we continue in our set ways. /End rant/

My real reason to post was these images I found via one of my fav blogs Goodmorning & Goodnight. Which he took via here.

We idealize and romanticize nature all the time. Both of these pictures are 'nature' but with two very different patterns of organization. We (as in my fellow architecture discussion student collectively) love to say over and over again that we have to get back to 'nature' and be more balanced with 'nature', yet no one has defined exactly what nature and natural means. How can we have a discussion when we are not even defining what we are discussing in the first place?

A Closet Christian

Recently I’ve time and time again been presented with the choice of being authentic, or being liked. I’ve chosen the latter…all the time. It’s not something I’m proud of. What comes along with the desire to be liked is aiming for the middle ground, not too high or low, but just enough to blend in. In the end you sell out: you sell out your beliefs, your morals, your values, and everything that matters so deeply to you (secretly).

I find myself as a closet Christian on campus. I veer away from even mentioning the name of Jesus because of what I know may be coming to me. Just the other day in class Christians were mentioned in relation to the design field, as having a ‘Christian design practice’, and the class erupted in laughter. I know I should expect to be misunderstood as a Christian, for heaven’s sake the person we Christians take that name from (Jesus Christ) was misunderstood and mistreated. It’s just hard to be surrounded by people who are making a laughing stock about what you hold most dear to you. It cuts deep man, real deep.

I really don’t know where to go from here. Only that I know I want to hold onto truth whatever the cost, and it’s going to hurt. But I desire to live not just for my own personal happiness, goals, dreams, and aspirations, but for a higher purpose.

Grandma in the flower bed

As I was walking back to my house after taking my last final on Friday morning I saw something that made me smile. On the St.Paul campus of the University of Minnesota there is beautiful landscaping. Every day I walk down concrete steps from the street and into a perfectly design green space with trees, lush grass, and blooming flowers in the warm months. Friday morning when I walked my usual route I noticed an elderly lady, dressed in a crisp camel colored pantsuit, crawling in the flower beds. Her tan sweater lay across her arm as she held up her camera lens, crouching low with her knees in the dirt to capture the beauty of that day in white tulip petals. I didn't want to stop and stare at her, but as I was walking by I slowed my pace just so I could observe her. Slowly moving from one spot to the next, she calculated the exact shot she wanted.  As I continued walking past I kept glancing back to see her make her way through the flowers. Maybe her hobby is flower photography, maybe she will put the pictures in wooden frames to remember the late spring day, or she will add them to her bathroom decor.

Like a child in a candy store admiring the vibrant sugary delights, her tender gaze caressed the tulips. Even though she was old in years she still hadn't lost that fresh fascination with the world, when everything is new, waiting to be discovered, when you still have the humility to admit that this world is so wonderful and you're only a small part of it. 

A few times this semester my roommates and I have run about the house yelling "Ice cream! Ice cream!" usually late in the evening, and on a Friday. (Well by late I mean 9:45pm) Our ice cream run consist of driving to Cub foods where we all select our flavor we are craving at the moment. Deciding on an ice cream flavor is a complicated process, chunks of stuff? no chunks? chocolate? strawberry? caramel swirls? One particular evening I was thoroughly involved in the ice cream selection process and reading about what wonders the ice cream containers held. It was not until I said, quietly to myself, "double fudge" that I realized my face was only an inch away from glass door that separated me from the creamy delights. Both my hands were also pressed onto the cold door, like how a small child looks at the monkey in the zoo behind the glass. I glanced to my right and noticed my roommates looking at me and laughing at my child-like behavior. Ice cream flavors fascinate me, the colors, the chunks of stuff they add like cookie dough and sprinkles, and the end result when you finally get to open and taste your perfectly selected treat. In that moments when I was totally engrossed in my ice cream selection I begin to act like that small unashamedly fascinated kid in the candy store without even noticing. I never want to lose that amazement for even the small things in life. 

I hope to grow up and be a grandma who crawls in the flower beds in my camel colored pantsuit.

Design Process

I have never been happier for an acrylic box. 

I was smiling all the way home as I held it on the bus from Rapson Hall on East Bank to home last friday. No one understood why I was clutching my box so tenderly. The tall man in tan exited the bus to the right, and only glanced at my wonderful creation. I wanted to stand up in the middle of the bus, arms outstretched holding my box at arms length spinning around like those cheesy lovey dovey scenes in moves, then I would slowly and tenderly hug my creation and continue to spin in dizzying circles. I felt like announcing to the whole bus of bored blank faces of ipod-induced-coma college students “LOOK! My beautiful creation! Yes it may look like a simple acrylic box with circles cut into it, but it’s so much more don’t you see? I made it! I took it from an idea, a sketch on paper, and now it’s a thing! I’m made something! Isn’t it wonderful?”

Okay…even though I wished to do all those things I sat silently with my heavy backpack in my lap, balancing the box on top. Then I slowly made my way home. Not really anything theatrical. But why would a simple box give me such joy? A simple creation? Well, because it really is so much more than that.

It’s more than a box because it’s part of the whole design process. Taking an abstract idea and ultimately making it into an physical thing is wonderful. For example, I am currently fabricating a luminaire (fancy design talk for a light fixture) for my lighting class. This project is coordinated with my interior design studio work where I designed a coffee shop, and now I am making a luminaire that would be placed in said shop.

A Cabinet of Curiosity by Domenico Remps

I start with an abstract idea or an image, such as the above image which I used as an inspiration for my coffee shop design. Then how does that get translated into a physical thing? I make many hasty sketches on notebook paper, sketchbooks, the back of class assignments, and post it notes. Eventually I come to drawing out specific dimensions. 

After that I mock it up with paper, then a crescent board model, where it really helps me figure out the exact size I want. For this luminaire specifically I wanted to see the size of the box in relation to the light bulb that would be placed in the acrylic box to be made.

I figured out the perfect size! After that I put the design into AutoCAD so I could bring the file to the workshop and cut it into acrylic on the laser cutter....

Presto! After about a half hour I had this wonderful object which I carried home one the bus (as noted above). It took little time to glue it together.

While I was home on Easter weekend, I put the lamp kit in, and screws....and that's where the process ends for now! I'm going to finish the luminaire this weekend and present this coming week!

Now you can see into the world of a wonderful design student! Things don't just magically come to be because there is so much that happens in between an initial idea and a finished product. 

Maybe I'm strange, maybe I'm crazy, maybe I have no life (well as a design student homework=life), maybe I'm a nerd, but I LOVE school. I love learning,and curiosity really seems to be a major theme in my life recently. There's so much to know about the world, things to make, inspiration to be had. 

I'm just enjoying the process.

Interior Design

My dear reader, it is that time in the semester when I do nothing but homework, and feel guilty event to take the time to write a blog post. So what exactly do I spend my time doing?

Interior Design. That’s what I’m going to school for. People don’t really get it.

I’m not going to school to learn how to paint walls, or to make things look ‘pretty’ and decorate. I often have to defend what I’m going to school for when people ask because people discount it to my face, or just have no idea what interior design actually is. After I say I’m going to school for or my major is interior design, I get reactions such as: “Ah, inferior design!” “Oh cool! Could you help me decorate my house?” “When you graduate you can come and design my place!” “Oh yeah, interior decorating, that’s great…” “Do you watch HGTV?” *sigh* I’ve even heard of certain people saying: “Have your kids go to school for something worthwhile, not something like interior design for example…”

Sure you may think that I’m wasting my time going to school for interior design, but do you know what it actually is? Do you know the choices that designers make in the environments that you spend a majority of your time in? (The statistics say that Americans spend almost 90% of their time indoors now!) Why do you return to your favorite coffee shop? Or restaurant? How come you like shopping at one clothing store over the other? Why does it seem so much easier to study at the library? It most likely has something to do with the designed environment.

Since I love definitions so much, I’ll throw this one out: "Interior design includes a scope of services performed by a professional design practitioner, qualified by means of education, experience and examination, to protect and enhance the health, life safety and welfare of the public." from NCIDQ (emphasis mine)  

Or this: "Interior designers need to be creative, imaginative and artistic. They also need to be disciplined, organized and skilled business people. Combining aesthetic vision with practical skills and knowledge, interior designers work with clients to develop design solutions that are "aesthetically appealing, technically sophisticated and pragmatically satisfying." from ASID

Or this is a condensed version of what NCIDQ says interior design is:

creative and technical solutions are applied, solutions are functional, enhance the quality of life, aesthetically attractive. Designs coordinated with the building shell, acknowledge the physical location and social context, must adhere to code and regulatory requirements,environmental sustainability, follows a systematic and coordinated methodology,research, analysis and integration of knowledge, creative process, needs and resources of the client are satisfied.

Hmm, that sounds like more than painting walls to me...

Okay so I can give you the textbook definition of interior design, but what is it really to me? In the long hours that I work on projects I ask myself that all the time. It's artistic, it's visual problem solving, it's multitasking, it's thinking about people's needs, it's shaping the environments that people move through in their day, it can be designing people's lifestyles, it is installation art, it's a marketing tool, it can help people relax and heal, it's what gives your favorite restaurant character, it's shapes people lives.

Like you, I would love to spend the majority of my time outside enjoying a limitless sky above, and no walls at my side. But the fact of the matter is that in our modern world we work, play, eat, learn, heal, sleep, and live indoors a majority of the time. Interior design is what makes the spaces we move through beautiful and functional. It's the backdrop of our lives.

Cabinet of Curiosities

This semester I have to design a coffee shop for my Interior Design Studio class and I think I will base my concept for the project off one of my favorite things: a cabinet of curiosities.

I have always been fascinated by the idea of a cabinet of curiosities (Also known as a cabinet of wonder, Kunstkammer or Wunderkammer in German). It may spring from all the nature center visits of my childhood, tapping on the glass pane separating me and snakes, picking up pine cones on nature walks, or simply being enthralled by even the simplest natural object.

I visited the Bell Museum of Natural History right here on the U of MN campus after my last class for the week. I cannot believe that I have not explored the wonders held within that building until now. Having a lecture in the large auditorium connected to the museum this spring and last, I have been mere steps away from a whole world of  wonderful objects without even knowing it. 

A cabinet of curiosities is literally a window to the world, a visual delight, and sometimes a visual overload. Basically they came about during the Renaissance period from rich guys who had time and money on their hands to collect cool stuff, though humans have been collecting intriguing objects throughout the ages. They bring to mind great adventurers and explorers who went to the ends of the earth and decided to pick up a few things along the way, or the anthropology professor who has filled his old creaky office shelves with peculiar things. They are a delight the eyes and the imagination.

I am particularly interested in the cabinets because they house such a variety of not only objects, but stories. Being an aspiring collector of curious objects myself, with every object there is a story and a history. The rocks on my bookshelf were picked up on the shore of Lake Superior last fall, the piggy bank a gift from my parents, and the feathers from a collection of my grandfathers.

We are accustomed now to searching out the latest YouTube sensation, the next big musician, or the up and  coming artist or designer on the internet, yet we are still taping into the age old search for something that fascinates us. I think we need to remember that there are curious things all around us everyday if we just step out our door. 

In the Bell Museum Touch and See room, it's like a cabinet of curiosities was strewn over the entire room. There are animal bones, antlers, rocks, seashells, animal pelts, live snakes and turtles, and many more objects that you can pick up and investigate closely. I felt like a kid again as I knelt on the floor and stared into the red eyes of a turtle, or when I lifted the various antlers to test their weight. In the room there are also cabinets full of various natural history objects, and I could spend hours gazing at the wonders within. For me, looking at the various treasures is more aesthetic than scientific because I could not tell you the difference and names of one bird or another, or identify what animal skull graces the shelf, but it does not diminish their intrigue.

I drool over books such as the 636 page volume of Albertus Seba's Cabinet of Natural Curiosities. I spend hours perusing photos of fellow curiosity hunters, such as Curious Expeditions Flickr page. I long to have an array of objects like ones you can buy here from a store in New York. I could spend hours in the Touch and See room at the Bell Museum. Some people collect the same object when they travel such as mugs, t-shirts, or snow globes, I buy something that is unique and will add variety to my collection. I cannot help but be curious about the world around me, I guess I still am that little kid who thinks they found a great treasure when I pick up a perfectly shaped rock, a piece of driftwood, or a fascinating seashell.

Penny Walks

As I write this, snow is swirling outside, yet again covering everything in sight. I meant to write this a few days ago because I think it would have been more timely, but no matter... 

The recent thaw brought to mind penny walks, an important part of my childhood. I have come to the realization that I actually AM quite weird. Yes, I know, you're thinking it's about time that I have understood this...but more than that, my childhood was quite abnormal in the best way possible. I used to think I was rather 'normal' up until very recently, but when you start talking about 'normal' things that you did when you were a child and people stare at you like you're from another planet...well then you know something is up. Apparently I did many strange and abnormal things as a child. Penny walks being one of them.

A typical street in Minneapolis

I think of penny walks and realize that they are very specific to my upbringing. Growing up in the city in Minnesota, where there's lots of snow, where people actually walk outside in the winter, and where people carry spare change for the bus all play a part in penny walks. When I was young, my mother would try many different things to get me out of doors. I would go on walks at the nature center with my siblings, and play outside in the snow all the time, but penny walks originally were another ploy to get us in the fresh air in late winter when the snow is just starting to melt. 

During the winter, the greedy claws of snowbanks will snatch away anything you drop in them, spare change included and when the weather finally warms up they are forced to release their icy grip on the treasures held within. And that's where penny walks come in. I would go on walks with my mom, and my siblings  and we would have a competition to see how much spare change we could find. At the end of our jaunt, whoever had the most money would gain bragging rights until the next time we ventured out. 

The bent and broken street pennies

We found more than just pennies, such as dimes, nickels, and the ever sought after quarters. Once I found a $20 winning already scratched off lottery ticket, and at another time a $20 bill frozen in the ice. Through all those walks over the years my eyes have been keenly trained to spot the small metal disks. At one point I even gained the nickname of Eagle Eyes, because I could spot a penny like a bird of prey finds a mouse. As time went on I would jump at the chance to go on a penny walk, and it ended up usually only being my mom and I walking. 

We would swing by penny street, not it's actual name but the one it gained because you were always guaranteed to find some spare change on it. My mother and I probably looked quite strange as we walked placidly down the sidewalk, only to suddenly burst into screams of "PENNY PENNY!!" and "I SAW IT FIRST" while pointed madly at a spot in the road or on the sidewalk, the rule being whoever sees it first gets it. At other times we would suddenly lunge towards the pavement to snatch up the copper disks. The curb was also a coveted position because it gave you a perfect view of the street and the sidewalk, I would walk along it like a balancing gymnast ready to leap off at a penny's notice. We always tried to walk side by side, because whoever was in front had an unfair advantage, and if someone started walking ahead the other would walk even faster, and soon we would be sprinting and sweeping our gaze back and forth rapidly searching.

Being away here at college I've been able to experience the wonders of penny walks. I haven't been counting....but I think I've found 37 cents this thaw. My friends laugh at me as I suddenly stop in mid stride to pick up a penny, nickel, or dime on the pavement, but I don't think they understand that...

...To this day I can't pass a humble penny on the sidewalk. 

Bus Surfing

Rain or shine, snow piled deep or shallow, as a student at the University of Minnesota I spend much of my time going to and from classes on the Campus Connector. I enjoy my time on the bus, letting my mind wander, people watching, or listening to strangers conversations. Lately though, I've needed something new to occupy myself on the bus. Since I can't read my homework, and I don't always like to have headphones stuffed into my ears to shut myself off from the sounds of the world, I've invented a new sport. 

The ever faithful Campus Connector

That's right, I've created the brand new sport! Bus Surfing! Now what you need for this is a bus, and just yourself, no surfboard needed. A backpack is optional, which I will explain later. Rather then just sit or stand back and endure a simple bus ride, I have invented a way to make every bus ride more exciting and interactive than ever before.

This past summer I went to Hawaii and tried surfing for the first time ever. I fell in love with it. Alas I live in Minnesota, a land locked state, with plenty of bodies of water (our lovely lakes), but not any ocean. So in order to bring the feeling of Hawaii to the snow covered Midwest, Bus Surfing was born. It's rather simple really...

The correct Bus Surfing stance

In order to bus surf, you have to be standing up, which isn't a problem if you ride the bus at the bus times of the day. Position your feet and body as you would if you were on a surfboard, and make the necessary adjustments when packed like sardines with all your fellow college students. Normally when one rides the bus, you hold onto the poles to keep yourself from toppling onto the other riders, but with bus surfing the goal is to keep your balance without any support. When the bus moves keep your balance and imagine that you are riding the thundering waves in Hawaii. This sport is guaranteed not only to help you pass the time on your commute, but make it fun as well.

There are a few things you can do to improve your Bus Surfing skill such as ride the bus during the winter. The added snow on the road makes for a bumpier ride, and thus a more challenging bus surf ride. For added difficulty you may also carry a backpack full of 5lb textbooks. Bonus points for a laptop, your lunch for the day, and any large homework projects. To continue to improve your bus surfing skills, add additional textbook, bricks, or hand weights as needed.

Happy Bus Surfing!